Bright Stain
by Francesca Bell (Red Hen Press, 2019)
Reviewed by Susan E. Gunter, Ph.D
In Stanley Kunitz’s “The Testing-Tree,” the poet tells us:
In a murderous time
the heart breaks and breaks
and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go
through dark and deeper dark
and not to turn.
For Francesca Bell’s first book, Bright Stain, there could be no better epigraph. She breaks our hearts, forcing us to enter our own deepest dark and not to turn away.
Bright Stain divides into four sections, the first alluding to trauma in childhood and the last showing us the grace the narrator has reached as a mature woman, grace she earned. Most of the poems are arranged in even stanzas, frequently couplets and triplets. This semi-formal arrangement allows her control over material that is so explosive that it would be
nearly impossible to read otherwise. Occasionally Bell gives us a prose poem, adding variety to her otherwise tightly ordered stanzas. She frames her collection carefully; the first poem, “As Is God,” has a snake devouring the innocent, and the last one, “Cage of Longing,” features two pythons coupling.
Their tails cross
one over the other.
Their clear eyes do not close. (“Cage of Longing,” 102)
Bell is, above all, an exceptionally careful poet. The multi- faceted nature of the snake image alludes to Eve and the fall from Paradise, the Old Testament attribution of original sin to woman. How appropriate here, where women, their roles and their history are interrogated with deathly precision. We see portraits of vulnerable, desired and desiring women who are at the mercy of the violent forces surrounding them. Women are vessels, filled and emptied over and over. “[Y]ou enter me as dynamite / enters a mountain, sliding precisely in / until bliss demolishes us” (“The After Sorrow,” 57). The tone of the book seems predominantly medieval, with its chastising of the flesh. I could not help but think of the archaic meaning of “to die:” to have an orgasm. Her serpentine intertwining of sex and death is central to unraveling her meanings.
As Bell forces us to look, to not turn away, we see in the pain she sketches so graphically the holiness of the body’s secrets. Uncovering the body becomes “a gift from God,” her burgeoning breasts “those miracles / risen finally on my waiting chest” (“Gift,” 16). A favorite, “Sending Underwear to Prison,” is a frightening poem, a supplication for the evil that exists, yet it ends with a baby’s skin. The poems transition from one aspect of our sexuality to another, from breaking the hymen to a child’s head crowning in “Remembering the Girl.” “Only her blood arrested him / mid-thrust, fresh and bright / as poppies” (29).
The book’s title suggests the antitheses it presents: the stains on the human condition are real, yet they are also bright. These are carpe diem poems: we must live in the “now” of our lives, no matter how painful it may be. In “Taking Up Serpents” she returns to the snake, linking it to death but adding the gorgeous line, “New tongues speak in my body” (26). “In Which Mary Advises You to Have the Abortion” as- serts women’s power: Mary could have refused to carry God’s child, Jesus. At times I felt overwhelmed by the violence, the sorrow, Bell gives us. I wanted her to stop. Yet I could not stop reading.
I love the final poems. While they are at times heart-breakingly sad, they reveal an acceptance of women’s lives. “What Rises, Scalding” presents a beautiful picture of the narrator’s inner life. As she receives news of a liver disease, she announces “I want to be the tree the hawks land in,” concluding, “I imagine it’s possible to reach the other side” (“What Rises, Scalding,” 100). In her lovely poem “The Bones’ Antidote” the narrator imagines a beautiful pile of bones lying beneath the Paris streets, imagines herself lying there in a “surplus of pleasure.”
Vertebral columns do not rise,
but scatter. Scapulae and ilia
cast their shadowed wings. (“The Bones’ Antidote,” 47)
I am not sure there is a surplus of pleasure in these poems, yet Bell gives us a merciless view of the human condition that leaves us breathless.
In a murderous time
the heart breaks and breaks
and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go
through dark and deeper dark
and not to turn.
For Francesca Bell’s first book, Bright Stain, there could be no better epigraph. She breaks our hearts, forcing us to enter our own deepest dark and not to turn away.
Bright Stain divides into four sections, the first alluding to trauma in childhood and the last showing us the grace the narrator has reached as a mature woman, grace she earned. Most of the poems are arranged in even stanzas, frequently couplets and triplets. This semi-formal arrangement allows her control over material that is so explosive that it would be
nearly impossible to read otherwise. Occasionally Bell gives us a prose poem, adding variety to her otherwise tightly ordered stanzas. She frames her collection carefully; the first poem, “As Is God,” has a snake devouring the innocent, and the last one, “Cage of Longing,” features two pythons coupling.
Their tails cross
one over the other.
Their clear eyes do not close. (“Cage of Longing,” 102)
Bell is, above all, an exceptionally careful poet. The multi- faceted nature of the snake image alludes to Eve and the fall from Paradise, the Old Testament attribution of original sin to woman. How appropriate here, where women, their roles and their history are interrogated with deathly precision. We see portraits of vulnerable, desired and desiring women who are at the mercy of the violent forces surrounding them. Women are vessels, filled and emptied over and over. “[Y]ou enter me as dynamite / enters a mountain, sliding precisely in / until bliss demolishes us” (“The After Sorrow,” 57). The tone of the book seems predominantly medieval, with its chastising of the flesh. I could not help but think of the archaic meaning of “to die:” to have an orgasm. Her serpentine intertwining of sex and death is central to unraveling her meanings.
As Bell forces us to look, to not turn away, we see in the pain she sketches so graphically the holiness of the body’s secrets. Uncovering the body becomes “a gift from God,” her burgeoning breasts “those miracles / risen finally on my waiting chest” (“Gift,” 16). A favorite, “Sending Underwear to Prison,” is a frightening poem, a supplication for the evil that exists, yet it ends with a baby’s skin. The poems transition from one aspect of our sexuality to another, from breaking the hymen to a child’s head crowning in “Remembering the Girl.” “Only her blood arrested him / mid-thrust, fresh and bright / as poppies” (29).
The book’s title suggests the antitheses it presents: the stains on the human condition are real, yet they are also bright. These are carpe diem poems: we must live in the “now” of our lives, no matter how painful it may be. In “Taking Up Serpents” she returns to the snake, linking it to death but adding the gorgeous line, “New tongues speak in my body” (26). “In Which Mary Advises You to Have the Abortion” as- serts women’s power: Mary could have refused to carry God’s child, Jesus. At times I felt overwhelmed by the violence, the sorrow, Bell gives us. I wanted her to stop. Yet I could not stop reading.
I love the final poems. While they are at times heart-breakingly sad, they reveal an acceptance of women’s lives. “What Rises, Scalding” presents a beautiful picture of the narrator’s inner life. As she receives news of a liver disease, she announces “I want to be the tree the hawks land in,” concluding, “I imagine it’s possible to reach the other side” (“What Rises, Scalding,” 100). In her lovely poem “The Bones’ Antidote” the narrator imagines a beautiful pile of bones lying beneath the Paris streets, imagines herself lying there in a “surplus of pleasure.”
Vertebral columns do not rise,
but scatter. Scapulae and ilia
cast their shadowed wings. (“The Bones’ Antidote,” 47)
I am not sure there is a surplus of pleasure in these poems, yet Bell gives us a merciless view of the human condition that leaves us breathless.
Francesca Bell’s poems and translations appear in many journals, including B O D Y, Massachusetts Review, New Ohio Review, North American Review, PoetryNorthwest, Prairie Schooner, and Rattle. She is the former poetry editor of River Styx, the translator of a collection of poems by Palestinian poet Shatha Abu Hnaish (Dar Fadaat, 2017), and the author of the collection Bright Stain (Red Hen Press, 2019).
Susan E. Gunter (Reviewer) holds a Ph.D. in English and taught literature and writing for over thirty years. Her books include Dear Munificent Friends (U of Michigan Press, 1999), Dearly Beloved Friends (U of Michigan Press, 2001), Alice in Jamesland (U of Nebraska Press, 2009--acclaimed in New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, Irish Times), and My Vacation at the Beach; A Love Story (CreateSpace, 2011). She has also published numerous articles and poems and serve on an editorial board for The Complete Henry James Letters. Recently, she has started an editing business. Learn more at. www.susanegunter.com
Susan E. Gunter (Reviewer) holds a Ph.D. in English and taught literature and writing for over thirty years. Her books include Dear Munificent Friends (U of Michigan Press, 1999), Dearly Beloved Friends (U of Michigan Press, 2001), Alice in Jamesland (U of Nebraska Press, 2009--acclaimed in New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, Irish Times), and My Vacation at the Beach; A Love Story (CreateSpace, 2011). She has also published numerous articles and poems and serve on an editorial board for The Complete Henry James Letters. Recently, she has started an editing business. Learn more at. www.susanegunter.com